Semester 2 2020-2021:
Semester 1 2020-2021: Decolonising Art History
Vision and Value: Cotton and the Materiality of Race
Anna Arabindan-Kesson (Princeton University USA)
Weds 11 Nov 2020, 12 pm | Register for the lecture and q&a at Eventbrite
This talk examines the visual relationship between the cotton trade and the representation of the black body in American culture, using historical case studies and contemporary art. Juxtaposing contemporary interventions with historical moments, it examines how cotton materially influenced the way black bodies were seen, and how black Americans saw themselves, as both enslaved and free Americans. It argues that tracing this relationship deepens our understanding of the intersections of vision, value and subjectivity in the production of racial identity in nineteenth-century America, and also today.
Anna Arabindan-Kesson is an assistant professor of Black Diasporic art jointly appointed in the Departments of African American Studies and Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. Born in Sri Lanka, she completed undergraduate degrees in New Zealand and Australia and worked as a Registered Nurse before completing her PhD in African American Studies and Art History at Yale University. Her first book, under contract with Duke University Press and called Black Bodies White Gold: Art, Cotton and Commerce in the Atlantic World will be published in Spring 2021.
Pre-recorded lecture to be posted on The University of Manchester video portal for viewing before the live q&a on Wednesday, 11 November at 12 mid-day
Humour and the Commodification of Suffering:
Strategies of Cultural Resilience in Contemporary Art
Chrisoula Lionis (The University of Manchester)
Weds, 25 Nov 2020, 5.15 pm | Register for the lecture and q&a at Eventbrite
Framed by discussion of how humour in contemporary art differs to ‘everyday’ visual forms (memes, graffiti etc.), this talk considers how humour is used as a political strategy by artists from diverse sites of crisis: Greece, Palestine and Indigenous Australia. Analysing the work of artists Khaled Hourani, Richard Bell, and Kostis Stafylakis, it demonstrates how humour in contemporary art contributes to three forms of cultural resilience: ‘authenticity’, ‘enactment’, and ‘placemaking’.
Chrisoula Lionis is a writer and cultural producer based between Athens and Manchester. Working in the area of cultural politics, Lionis holds a PhD in Visual Culture (UNSW Australia, 2013) and is the author of Laughter in Occupied Palestine: Comedy and Identity in Art and Film (I.B. Tauris, 2016). Lionis has published widely including in journals Social Text, Cultural Politics and the Middle East Journal for Culture and Communication, and has held several international teaching and research positions (including the National Institute for Experimental Arts, UNSW Australia in Sydney, and the Department of Social Anthropology, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens). Lionis is the Co-director of the pedagogical platform Artists for Artists and is currently a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at the University of Manchester, working on project Laughing in an Emergency: Humour, Cultural Resilience and Contemporary Art. From 2021 she will be Research Fellow on AHRC project Understanding Displacement Aesthetics and Creating Change in the Art Gallery for Refugees, Migrants and Host Communities.
Pre-recorded lecture to be posted on The University of Manchester video portal for viewing before the live q&a on Wednesday, 25 November at 5.15pm
Please save the date for these upcoming talks in Semester 2
17 February 2021, 5.15pm – Marcia Pointon (Professor Emerita, University of Manchester)
10 March 2021, 5.15pm – Stephen Welsh (Independent Curator & Consultant)
24 March 2021, 5.15pm – Francesca Billiani (Italian Studies, University of Manchester)
Dispatches in Art History 